


all this sky between us

by ryyves



Category: How to Train Your Dragon (Movies)
Genre: Gen, Mother and Son Bonding, Post-HTTYD2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-14
Updated: 2017-09-14
Packaged: 2018-12-29 19:22:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12091725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ryyves/pseuds/ryyves
Summary: hiccup and valka grieve in different ways. one night, on the beach, neither of them able to sleep, they find a way to reconcile their pain, to live with it and to live with each other's. they are mother and son, fighting the same battle, climbing the same skies, with this grief stretching between them.





	all this sky between us

**Author's Note:**

> written largely to prove something to myself.

some nights you wake and you’re drowning, limbs tangled in your bedclothes, every laborious breath a miracle. the hut seems silent, all but your gasped breaths, your hands on the wood, your hair plastered to your face. for a moment you see the great white slope of your king’s back, slumped over onyx-colored stone, bleeding out. bleeding out. and then it’s gone, and the silence all rushes out until you can hear everything – the birds chirping faintly through the windows, as though unsure whether to rise in crescendo or fall back to sleep; the front door swinging slightly in the breeze, clattering against the doorframe; your son’s breathing in the attic. can you hear that last one, or does the silence just trick you into believing it?

the walls press in on you, precise and confining, this home too small for your dragon’s heart. you were built for wild moors, for tundras speckled with dragons’ roosts, for wheeling constellations and the gaping dome of the sky pulling you up, not for this ordinary life. not for both feet on the ground.

you let yourself wake up, let the thin moonlight through the open windows grow brighter and brighter. slowly, as if testing the waters, you set your feet on the wooden floor. the cool texture grounds you, and you sit on the edge of the bed and listen, and breathe.

the air here smells of old mementos, of the dust you haven’t bothered to brush off. stoick’s axe, keepsakes of hiccup’s progression from child to chief, all the things you missed while you were busy—what? running away? hiccup keeps saying you can’t let it kill you, but there is an anger in you that you can’t reconcile.

mother of the chief. what a joke. you can barely hold yourself together, here. you walk through the village and see, instead of vibrant life, altered memories. you see images of your youth, superseded by this new berk. everywhere, you see him in mirages, in feelings. stoick in the armoury, red-haired and youthful; stoick holding the new baby, telling heroes’ tales for bedtime stories, alleviating your quiet fears; stoick beneath the great peak of berk, where he said he’d wanted to take you to propose – this great tangled mess of words, warm and fast, stoick tripping over his tongue trying to ask, would you marry him? all of it coming out way too soon and his face flushed and you saying, more than anything, laughter-bright and adoring.

shouldn’t it be easy for you, when you’d already grieved his absence for twenty years? shouldn’t you be able to hold all this sorrow inside you? but you have fire in your belly and all this tragedy keeps coming back up, singed and raw.

they are all trying so hard to recover, the people of berk, trying to put their home back together, so you try, too. you busy yourself in the forge, sparks leaping up at you, flame wreathing everything you are. you are something fire-born, something to fierce to touch, like wildfires, like their smoke rising up and up and up.

you were not born a dragon, like your son. the fire found you, took you burnt up to the mountain. showed you the sky.

your son is grieving, too, in his own way. imagine this: you lose a mother, and then a father. wherever you tread, death follows. in your dreams there is always a dragon at the base of the mountain, its own blood leaking out and out. how does he hold this all inside of him? how does he work toward becoming the greatest chief berk has ever seen with all this tragedy in him?

and you did this to him.

you know you can’t let your grief tear you down – after all, you were the one who fled. you were the one who never came back. you were the one who looked around at all her dragons and said, _i am better off like this._ and even more: _they are better off without me._ you told yourself, again and again, in waking to homesickness so visceral you found yourself ill, that you were giving them a better life, but you just pulled down a world of tragedy upon your son. you have no right to grieve for the husband you abandoned. you have no right to this world, to this old, familiar home.

the last time you slept in this bed, his great shoulders took up more than half of it. the last time you walked this hall, he was calling out to you from the other room. the last time you lived here, really lived, you lived beside him. it feels an act of dishonesty, of betrayal, to live here without him. to claim his home as your own. but it is as much your son’s home, yours, as it was his.

you walk slowly through the hut, its narrow windows and drafty walls, fingers trailing over surfaces – here, a corner, be wary; here, a long workbench; here, the hooks by the door, all filled with clothing; here a tail for toothless. why didn’t hiccup move into a new one, you wonder. you know why, but it doesn't soften the ache.

you run your fingers over bedposts, across the wooden walls. barefooted, you stop at the base of the staircase and watch it, wary-eyed, for any signs of movement. it stretches away from you like a bridge between you and your son, one you can’t bring yourself to cross, not now, not in the silent night, not when the open night calls to you.

this body is too small for you, your skin, your ribs, your lungs. you were born for catching wind, for frigid skies, for leaning back and letting the clouds take you; for stretching wings and the wild plummet through the dawn. you were born for something enormous. you were born of fire, and you are meant to be burning.

you wonder, as you pass the stairs, if this is how he feels, every day of his life. if his chest feels too tight and he can’t figure out how to fill it. you wonder if the confines of the hut threaten to crush his heart, if he was born for nothing but open sky as well. he is the bridge between worlds. he is glorious. he is burning, so bright it hurts to look at, as though the sun itself was born into a boy, and it terrifies you that it might burn him out.

this was your home, once, but now, you feel like a stranger wearing your skin. you are not the valka you were twenty years ago; you don’t know how to be a human again. none of the titles you hold resonate beneath your skin, as though you have come home an impostor.

the door swings shut behind you, the sound amplified by night. out here, the air rushes freely into your lungs, cold and clear. your bare feet crunch over pebbles, and you roll in discomfort on the balls of your feet. it is too warm here, compared to your icy home in the northernmost corner of the world.

out here, no one can see you. here, you are alone and the sky stretches on and on, a murky, cloud-coated blue, and the mountain rises jagged and treacherous behind you. you go out to the beach and walk slow and barefooted over the stones, waves crashing up against them and showering you with spray. it almost feels like home, here, the only place you have thought to call home in twenty years. you shiver in the night.

from here you can see dragons, great beasts illuminated by the pale light, glinting dimly, perched on roofs or in trees or curled up on great rocks; dragons opening one great eye to watch you pass, dragons stretching their claws mid-dream, dragons everywhere, alive and multitudinous and at peace. as though they always belonged here, when you remember a world of blood.

you walk in the other direction, away from the village, into the empty night where your breath comes in hot clouds, crystallizing in the air. woods you once knew as well as the freckles on your hands rise up beside you, but tonight you need the sea. tonight you need to know that the world is vast and endless, that somewhere in all this chaos lies a story that means something.

tonight it is just you and the cold, your feet soft on the pine needles, every lilting sound carried by the sea up to you. tonight is the woods passing you by; tonight is you, balanced between sky and sea, and the urge to surrender yourself to both.

footsteps echo behind you, sure and steady, and you turn. there, back along the beach, a dark figure resolves itself into the shape of your son. he carries in one hand a pair of worn boots, swinging them in his grip.

he needs this as much as you, the open skies, the sharp air, the way it calms and cleanses, like a baptism. you want a revelation, but your son has already done something worth a thousand years of history, something so monumental it fills up your chest like a bird caught in the cage of your ribs, something so remarkable it made new every stone in the archipelago, every wave, every heart.

hiccup draws near and his voice reaches you, but you can’t make out what he’s saying around the crashing of the waves. his eyes are dark with lack of sleep, or maybe with worry. he stops three feet from you, and for a moment he seems to be studying you. then he says, “mom. you forgot these.” _mom._ so simple, so ordinary, just like that. your heart aches, but it is not a bad ache. you find yourself smiling. your thoughtful, considerate son. your son who saw the best in everything and everyone, and almost died for it.

“go back to sleep,” you say, but it is tender and soft. you wonder if he is still living with the grief for you. you wonder how he is holding himself together.

you take the boots, and watch as your son sits down on a rock closest to the surf. slowly, you sit beside him. the clouds hover low over the sea, the two of you staring out to where the storm meets the surf. you dangle your feet in the water, the boots sitting between you like an offering, like a bridge. like a second chance.

“i’m so proud of you,” you say, not looking at him. “of everything you’ve become. everything you’re becoming. berk is lucky to have you.”

but he frowns into the night, and while you try to parse meaning from this, he is slipping away from you.

“did you find what you were looking for?” you ask at last. a long pause, while the wind picks up, whipping cold spray against your hands and faces.

“not really,” he says. “i don’t think i ever will. but i’m learning to live with that. i’m still looking—i don’t think i’ll ever stop—but I think – i think that’s okay.”


End file.
